Author / Lexine

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Posts by Lexine

Published poet, short story writer, and now novelist! My 1st eBook The Playgirl is out now!
by Lexine

A Passport Saga

My 1st ever adult passport. Guess how long I had to wait for it? 

Confession: I never had an adult passport until this year. I know I had one as a child since I remember taking trips to Canada, South Korea, and the Philippines then. As an adult, all my trips have been domestic, with only one trip done by flight, and I flew way before the Real ID requirement. While adult me has wanted to take international trips, they were never within my budget, and so I never bothered to get a passport. Until this year, and it’s not just for travel needs (I have plans on taking a birthday trip to Vancouver). As a Bi woman of color with a look and skin tone that may make “Border Patrol” curious, I felt like having a passport would also give me some peace of mind, whether to prove citizenship or to get TF outta here if I need to. Along with cuts to federal agencies thanks to evil broligarchs, I couldn’t have picked a worser year to apply for my first-ever passport! 😵‍💫

*Appointment Date: 5/12/2025*

Since my birthday is at the end of October, I had plenty of time to get myself a passport. I applied for Routine processing, booked my appointment in advance (I refused to take a chance with walk-ins), and had all the necessary documents and the $160 money order.  A pro-tip: if you need a birth certificate, it’s better to go to the office of vital records of the county you were born in and buy one (or multiple copies, if allowed) there instead of having it mailed to you from the state, if you can. It’s cheaper, no notary service necessary, and you get your birth certificate on the spot. I happen to live 40 minutes from the county I was born in, though I wish I knew this before I applied to get my birth certificate in the mail way back in February this year. (It arrived in the mail in late April; a two-month wait is typical.) I just went to the city hall of my birth county to get more copies, as I needed another one for my Real ID application. 

Anyway, back to my passport appointment: I had it at my local post office, and some crotchety old guy looked over my papers and also took my passport photos. We had to do a few takes because the first few photos came out blurry. There’s more on this that I’ll share later. The guy told me to visit travel.state.gov three weeks after my appointment to check the status of my passport application, which would be early June. 

So, early June arrived, and I checked the status of my application. I got this:

webpage of the US passport application status that reads: Not Available

(Note: this isn’t my pic, but the message was the same. *source*)

I didn’t sweat it. I had well over four months before my planned trip to Canada, and I also opted for Routine processing, so I figured I would see an update by the six-week mark at the soonest. That six-week mark was end of June, and here’s what I saw then:

webpage of the US passport application status that reads: Not Available

Same message. OK. I’m still within the 6-8 week processing timeframe. Maybe in the 7th week I’d get an update? 

It didn’t help that I was reading other people’s passport stories on Reddit and this site. Some, if not many, were getting theirs on time, if not sooner than me, and they too also applied for their 1st adult passport and used Routine service. When the 8-week mark arrived in mid-July, I found myself checking the status every day. And, I shit you not, I got the same “not available” status message every damn time. I checked to see if my money order got cashed (it did, a week after my appointment). I went to my local post office to see if my application got sent in (it was, to some office in Irving, Texas). I even contacted the offices of my local congressman to help me out (they tried but couldn’t). 

Though my travel plans were still over three months away, I began to fret. Did my application get lost? Or was it received but the agency is being lazy in processing it? Why didn’t I apply for a passport two years ago? 

Continue reading →

by Lexine

September’s Star Face

Yasmin LeBon on the cover of the premier issue of US Elle magazine, September 1985

Though Elle magazine had been in existence since 1945, the publication was only sold in France before expanding to other countries in the 1980s, with the States getting its own edition in September of 1985. Their minimal use of cover blurbs and promoting models of color on their covers were big reasons why I once favored Elle more than Vogue, especially in the 90s when Vogue gave the same two or three white models a cover four times a year. And while many 80s fashion mag covers look dated nowadays, the simplicity of this cover (simplicity in 80s fashion?), with that pop of yellow in a backdrop of black and Yasmin giving FACE, makes it quite the timeless image.

by Lexine

Throwback: Aretha Franklin Concert, 2015

Happy 10th (and five days) anniversary to when I got to see THE Queen Of Soul Aretha Franklin perform live! 🤩 The show took place three years before her passing, and it was my one and only time I got to see her. To hear her sing (the mic was definitely ON) remains a moment I’ll forever be grateful to witness. I still vividly remember seeing a lady two seats down from me bawling with emotion while Aretha belted a lovely gospel song. Babyface (lower left pic) also opened for her, and I’m always down for some classic Babyface. Two icons in one night, and I only paid a little over $50 for it! 😱

by Lexine

No Kid-ding

Happy International Childfree Day to those who chose not to have kids for their own reasons, make no regrets about it, and don’t care what others think of their decision to be childfree! 🥳🥂

(Side note: the pic is a two-fer, since Samantha Jones is a childfree character (and one of my icons), and is played by Kim Cattrall, who is CF in real life.)

(ETA: I was unaware that I used this same pic for last year’s childfree day. 😆Whoops!) 

by Lexine

Happy Birthday, Playgirl

My 1st eBook…in your two years of existence, you’ve gone through now four different covers, a slew of freebie giveaways just to get you out there, and I still await your first written review on that jungle site that I really shouldn’t be doing business with anymore. (Last time I checked, all my reviews on that site were all star ratings–no written review just yet.) I’m currently working on a baby sister for you *hint hint*, but I never forget my first-borns. Here’s to you on your special born day, Playgirl!  🥳🥂

And if you want to celebrate, go and give her a read today on any of these sites. She’s also on sale (till end of this month), exclusively at Smashwords! 

by Lexine

Happy Bastille Day 🇫🇷

“Why are today’s French so hell-bent on defending their civil liberties? Perhaps it has something to do with their heritage of overcoming abuse of power to earn their freedom.” —Rick Steves, from Rick Steves Europe, 2014

Maybe one day in the not-too-distant future will similar words be said about Americans.

Between this entry and this from two weeks ago, I think I’ll be celebrating special days of countries I admire (and would like to immigrate to if I win a big lottery jackpot) on this blog from here on out. Because what is there to celebrate in the States these days?

by Lexine

I Miss

— Physicians for a Healthy Democracy (@physiciandemocracy.medsky.social) 2025-07-07T15:32:20.925Z

I miss the days where I can live my life without worrying if my gender, sexual orientation, or/and skin color would make me a prime target for the modern-day Gestapo (even if I was born in the States). 

I miss having a proper, competent government at the federal level, where their social media posts were not written by 4Chan exiles. 

I miss having a competent Supreme Court that didn’t bow down to oligarchs. (Just three judges siding with democracy ain’t enough!) 

I miss the days when politics were boring and not “BREAKING NEWS” every damn day.

I miss knowing a time when the US was not associated with concentration camps.

I miss the days when Nazi/fascism shit was a vile thing to do, and you’d only catch glimpses of it being parodied on shows like South Park. 

I miss satire being satire and not an actual New York Times headline. 

I miss mainstream media being factual, objective, unbiased, boring, and informative. I think it was before Faux News arrived. 

I also miss news channels not being 24-7. I’m old enough to remember CNN not being all news all the time, and when they aired other programs, like Style With Elsa Klensch. 

I miss seeing people feeling genuine shame when they fucked up. 

I miss the Biden days. And the Obama days. And the Clinton days. And, dare I say it, the W. Bush days. As much as I still loathe W. Bush, things were quite bad then, but not as catastrophically bad as it is now. The person that throws shoes at Putin’s puppet will be considered an international hero. 

I miss the days when the US was one of the places people sought refuge in after fleeing from the violence in their native land. Now, the States is becoming one of those violent countries!

I miss escapism. I’ll get back to that soon. 

I miss destressing at the beach. Crowds, work, and other things are keeping me away from them at the moment. 

*pops a Werthers* 

I miss the days when young girls bought their makeup/skincare at the drugstores and not at Sephora because TikTok told them to go get their makeup/skincare at Sephora. I think I should be glad I grew up with Seventeen magazine (which hyped brands like Cover Girl and Neutrogena to us teens in the 90s) instead of social media. I also grew up in a town where we didn’t have a Sephora or Ulta, and that makeup at Macy’s (which we had) was “for old ladies”. 

I miss life before social media. Blogging here is my tie to the pre-SM days, since blogging existed before SM blew up. Also, I tend to write a lot, and you can only fit so many characters in a SM post. 

I miss pop culture before 2008. I don’t think pop culture really died in 2009, but it started getting mid when the 2010s arrived. I blame that fake AF family. 

I miss it when “celebrity” meant an entertainer or public figure who got famous through talent & hard work and sustained it all over the years, and not some who-dat who has a bunch of social media followers and blew up after one of their TikToks went viral. “Famous influencer”? “TikTok celebrity”?? I don’t know them and get off my lawn. 

I miss craftsmanship in fashion. Some of the outfits I see on fashion runways these days would make Yves Saint Laurent spin in his grave. 

I miss riot grrl rock, new jack swing R&B, and socially conscious messages in mainstream music. 

I miss being a cat mom. Even if I wasn’t thinking about fleeing the country, the rules in my apartment only permit service animals. *pouts* 

I kinda miss hash browns. There’s no low-carb equivalent for it! 

I will not miss the times I’m currently stuck in. I aim to be a survivor of these times, however.